Grosse Pointe Woods Redux

Well, it certainly seems as though we found an audience. The people of Grosse Pointe Woods have spoken loudly in response to our missive of yesterday, and not without making some valid points. We will not be able to address them all, but we do thank those who took the time to pen them.

First off, we referred to a Grosse POinte Woods School District which does not exist. It was a silly mistake which should have been easily overcome, and we apologize for it. But the real issue here is that of local control. So in an attempt to cut to the quick, we'll address that item today.

There is no actual local control of the local schools. We gave up on that when we bought into the whole idea of 'free' public education. As every political unit in the state of Michigan is a subset of the state and therefore subject to it, so too are public schools subject to it. Lansing will have its hand in our public schools, as things are, and that's that. We can debate whether Michigan should do this or that, but we cannot act as thought the state can't, at the end of the day, do what it wants with our schools.

The only real way to effect almost complete local control of the schools (and we say almost because there is a legitimate state oversight function within education) would be to make schools private so far as we can. Education should be overwhelmingly private anyway seeing as education is primarily a parental responsibility, and only secondarily a concern of the broader society. Society has no more business being the primary educator of our children than it has in feeding, clothing, and housing them.

Consider this: if we were to propose that the general society were to present to the taxpaying public a plan to feed, clothe, and house our children; indeed, to, ahem, force upon them national health care, without consideration of parental rights and responsibilities, the plan would be derided as socialist. Yet for some reason we do not apply that point with regard to public education.

If you want to have real and direct control of your children's education, fellow citizens of Grosse Pointe Woods, then take it and send your kids to private schools. Anything short of that is simply divvying up money at the public trough alongside our liberal Democratic friends.